Post-Cold War Interventions and International Development: Discourses, Practices and Policies - Einzelansicht

This course critically examines the interventionary discourses and policy practices of international organizations and leading Western governments. It focuses on post-Cold War interventions to bring out how international policy thinking has evolved over time, rationalizing new forms of external engagement. The course will discuss a wide range of international interventions, from state- and peacebuilding projects in war-shattered societies to (post-) Structural Adjustment Programs and good governance initiatives by the World Bank. The goal is to enable students to critically appreciate how key political terms, such as sovereignty, democracy and development, change meaning within distinct discursive frameworks – in the wake, introducing new policy practices. The central issues of the course are: How does international policy discourse frame political, economic and social underdevelopment as caused by the deficiencies within weak, failed or fragile states and societies, rather than as structurally imposed outcomes of the international system? How is political, economic and social development in the Global South understood as a national vs. international responsibility? How has development thinking evolved from a concern with material redistribution and economic modernization to a concern with individual empowerment and psycho-social well-being? How have the modes of intervention shifted from conditional lending to good governance reform? That is, how has international regulation moved from being an outside force for developing countries to being “part of the state itself” (Harrison 2001)?

Abrahamsen, Rita. 2000. Disciplining Democracy. Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. London: Zed Books.

Chandler, David. 2010. International Statebuilding: The Rise of Post-Liberal Governance. London: Routledge.

Duffield, Mark. 2007. Development, Security and Unending War. Governing the World of Peoples. Malden: Polity Press.

Hameiri, Shahar. 2010. Regulating Statehood. State Building and the Transformation of the Global Order. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Harrison, Graham. 2001. ‘Post-Conditionality Politics and Administrative Reform: Reflections on the Cases of Uganda and Tanzania’. Development and Change 32: 657–79.

———. 2004. The World Bank in Africa. The Construction of Governance States. London: Routledge.